Personal Narrative: Close To Death

On 09/12/2016, I Deputy Daniel Pruitt was dispatched to 52455 West Highway 16 for an unattended death compliant. I arrived on scene st 6:45pm and meet with Creek County EMS unit 40.

The most impactful event I experienced, was the loss of my father. I lost my father as a result of homicide, but he had made choices that kept him from being in my life. As a child, I saw my father every month and I enjoyed it: I had two sisters, I could hang out with and play with our dolls. My father could be a loving and great person when he chose to be.

Dealing with grief is never easy. One of the hardest time in anyone’s life is when an acquaintance or a loved one passes away. In the second week of the Fall 2016 semester, I received a devastating call. I walked into my chemistry class, and my mom called me from Turkey to tell me that my grandmother had passed away. I sat in silence in the car on the way home and thought about my grandmother. She had taught me innumerable important lessons throughout my life. Losing her changed everything, and I knew I had to return to my home country to say goodbye to my grandmother.

Please, oh please let the words come. I sit, and stare, and type, and I backspace. No one will like it. My work is crap. Crap, crap, crap. I crumple my paper watch it fall. The clock taunts with its ticking reminding me of all I want to forget. It creates a beat; a song. Poetic chords and dismal notes ring in my ears. But no, this is thought I should avoid. I am great- better than great. People will love this. Oh please, please, please let them love this. Will my legacy amount to nothing more than abysmal hope? This is the last time I think of it. Oh please don’t let me think of it. The blank page stares at me and I begin to write. One word, then another, then another, and another. You will never know what comes out onto the page until it is

As we mature, we learn to appreciate certain people in our lives, for instance: our grandparents. We live with the fear that we can lose them in the blink of an eye, as every passing day brings them closer to their death beds (hyperbole), but we're too busy living our lives, making time for work, school, and friends (Euphemism). We assure ourselves that we have forever to spend with them, but that is where we are mistaken. Unfortunately, this year in January, I experienced the cruel reality of death, myself. I have realized, truly how much death can change your perspective on many aspects of life. When I faced with this death, I began to appreciate family more, began to express my love for them more out of the fear that any goodbye could be the last.

I never knew much about death. I didn’t understand what happened to someone. It was like they just disappeared into thin air, never to be heard from again. Almost like a character in one of my mystery novels. Only this time, there was no group of brothers or a crime-solving girl to look for clues and solve the case. It was probably because no one close to me has died when I was old enough to remember it. To this day, I’ve still never lost anyone very close to me.

I always thought that there was a secret, a truth privy only to those who had experienced it, about coping with death. Having never encountered it in my fifteen years of life, death seemed a mystery, and those left in its wake even more so. Rationality being my forte, I determined that they must know something that I didn't, because in my mind every question had an answer and every problem, a solution. I concluded that there must be a secret, some way to bear the toll that death takes and move on. Eventually my mind was filled with other things, more questions needing answers, more problems needing solutions, so I pushed my existential one to the back of my mind. Little did I know, the real answer would find its way to me, as answers always seem to do when you stop looking for them.

She is gone and she took everything with her. She obliterated my life. It was unexpected. There was no reason behind her death; she left me without saying goodbye. How am I meant to survive? She was everything to me, my best friend why did she leave me so suddenly? We grew up together, did everything together, we were a team but she’s gone now. I am all alone. I’ve became independent doing things by myself. I suppose that wasn’t a bad thing but it has been lonely without her.

After four months of unglamorous international travel followed by four more months of endless, demoralizing doctor’s visits and hospital stays I returned to Miami worse for wear. Eight months without seeing my friends and barely keeping in touch through infrequent phone calls and texts meant that the vague, untested friendships I had made before my semester off had almost completely fizzled. Facing my mortality had subtly affected the way I acted and completely changed my perspective on life; making it difficult to reconnect with old acquaintances and to relate to the few friends I kept throughout my treatment.

The year was 2001 and I had suffered a tragic accident that left me near the loss of my life. I was four at the time and had been playing in the neighborhood with some friends when all a sudden, BAM! I was thrown to the bottom of a sewer and left unconscious. Not knowing what to do, a couple of friends who saw the act take place rushed to get my dad across the street to help retrieve me. Once my dad got to the scene he plunged down into the filth of the sewer and pulled me out of it. While I was semi-conscious from being pulled out of the hole, I had blood coming profusely out of my mouth as I began to violently throw up, little did I know, I was having seizures and did not even know what was going on around me, where I was, or if I was going to live. I had to nearly be life flighted out of the scene of I had a high chance of extreme brain damage or even death because of the high amount of blood swelling in the frontal lobe of my head. Once the paramedics finally arrived my eyes were swollen shut

On the morning of May 5th my views, my ideology, and my life changed dramatically. It was an expected loss yet caused me to realize just how much things in life mean, even the smallest things. After getting out of the shower and dressed for school I had time to spare so I decided to make sure everything was ready and eat some breakfast. I turned to look at my phone, after deciding to turn it on, and all I saw was a list of text messages from my mother. I normally don’t get that many texts, that early. I knew something bad must have happened. I unlocked my phone and began to read the messages. My great grandma had died; an influential person for me and my family. She died after being on hospice for 5 brutal days. Images flashed across my mind: her and I playing cards, her teaching me to cook, and her lessons, forever engraved into my soul.

I marched out of the school with my younger brother after a insipid day. Everyone was having conversations about what they are going to do over the weekend and what wild and insane event had taken place in their classroom. As I trotted across the crosswalk, I had my last words with my friends and other fellow students. I was taking the regular path home, keeping my head down, until I noticed my dad’s silver, slick sedan.

Have you ever lost a close one, friends, family? Once you experience a loss, everything changes. It’s a life changing experience, it’s the worst feeling in the world. When losing someone, you look back and have so many regrets. You start to think “Could I have been a better person for them?”. It’s permanent, once they are gone, they are gone.

In the beginning, the loss of my Pa was hard to process. I was in total shock. In my mind, " there was no way Pa was dead". Two days before I had just visited him. Once reality hit, the emotional issues emerged. Feelings of anger, sadness, disbelief, crying, you name it I experienced it. By the grace of The Most High being in a close-knit family assisted me with pulling together in that trying moment. My Mother, Siblings, Cousins, extended family, ectera, were instrumental in how I handled the grief. At first, I participated in unhealthy forms of coping with Pa's transition. For example, when my family wanted to drink in excess in remembrance of Pa, I was there. Alcohol allowed me a way to numb the pain. Another unhealthy way I coped was oversleeping

Death is an experience that every individual must deal with at one point in their life. Personally, I have little experience with death, but I have dealt with it through the pain felt by those surrounding me. When my Grandfather passed away, I did not experience any sort of loss, as I had only met him one time, but I supported my Mother as she grieved the loss of her father. Over time, I have supported friends who have lost family members, but was never forced to deal with death directly. Due to my inexperience with death and dying, I continue to have a fear of what is unknown to me.